


Crueler to Remember

by sharkneto



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adult Number Five | The Boy, Angst, Apocalypse, Gen, Mention of Starvation, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, five and delores have their usual intellectual love, just five surviving at the end of the world and all the tragedy that goes along with that, mention of suicide, no beta we die like ben, no luther/allison because they're siblings and ew incest, not gonna lie folks this one is straight up, they are siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:20:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29471601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkneto/pseuds/sharkneto
Summary: The Commission drops Luther and Allison in the apocalypse, for safe keeping. They run into a familiar face – the only face they could run into.OrFor the first time in a decade, Number Five has company.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves, Dolores/Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Number Five | The Boy & Allison Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Luther Hargreeves
Comments: 107
Kudos: 186





	1. Here

One moment they’re fighting the Commission, the next there’s a flash of blue, a whoosh of intense vertigo, and silence. Allison blinks as she looks around, trying to get her bearings over the sudden change. Luther towers next to her, looking around just as confused as she is. She holds her breath for another few seconds but none of the rest of their siblings appear with them.

Looks like it’s just the two of them, here.

Wherever here is.

Here is a wreck. Decrepit ruins of former buildings surround them, bricks and debris crowding into what used to be a street. Blackened beams are still visible from what must have been an intense fire that ravaged this block. Abandoned, rusty cars poke out among the bricks and broken glass. Whatever it was must have happened a while ago, as plants have started poking through gaps in the asphalt and vines twine their way up the few walls and columns still standing. The air is dusty and heavy. The sun beats down on them. It smells weird.

“Where are we?” Luther asks, deep voice cutting through the silence. Allison didn’t realize how intense the silence was until Luther broke it. There is _nothing_. No sounds of people, no animals scurrying through the debris, no birds calling from the sky.

Where did the Commission send them?

“I have no idea,” she says. She almost whispers it. It feels wrong to interrupt the quiet. She exchanges a worried look with Luther. He shrugs. Cautiously, they begin picking their way down the street. Might as well see if they can find anyone to tell them where the hell they are and what happened. Their footsteps reverberate through the empty street. Allison is glad for the small mercy that at least she’s wearing practical shoes and was dressed for their fight with the Commission. Heels would be murder here.

They walk for almost half an hour and all they find is more destruction. It’s like an entire city was demolished, gutted. Allison starts studying the wreckage around them for any clues as to what happened. As her eyes adjust to the glare of the sun, it gets easier to pick out details. Details like corpses. Everywhere. Many have decomposed down to the bone, skeletal hands and skulls sticking out around piles of bricks. Others are mummified, expressions taught and horrified from dried muscles pulling back their skin, still sitting in their cars like they’re just driving home from work.

“Do you think we need to worry about radiation?” Luther asks as they both quickly look away from a woman and her baby in the back of a taxi.

Allison shakes her head, eyes closed against the dead baby. _Claire is fine Claire is fine Claire is fine_. “I don’t think so,” she manages to choke out. “And if it is, it’s not like there’s anything we can do about it.” They’re stuck here with no protection. If there is radiation along with all the dust, well. She chooses to not think about that.

They walk some more. There’s not much else for them to do. Allison’s hopes of finding someone who can help them dwindle with every step. Her mouth is dry and tacky from breathing in the dusty, hot air. She would kill for some water right now. But all there is around them is more destruction and more bodies. The only other movement comes from bugs. Cockroaches skitter over the mummified corpses. Small beetles flee to cover as they kick aside debris.

Luther suddenly freezes and she almost runs into him. She glances up with a frown. His eyes are wide and his mouth is a thin line, distressed. He slowly points in front of him. Allison looks.

There’s a red wagon parked halfway down the block from them, left by a massive mound of rubble that blocks off most of the street. A pile of miscellaneous bits of wood, some cans, and dirty cloth is stacked inside. A large canteen is tucked into the side. That’s not what caught Luther’s attention, though. Allison inhales sharply.

There’s half a mannequin carefully balanced on top of the haul. Its single arm gestures elegantly to the devastation around them. There’s a wide sunhat on its bald head and it wears a dusty red sweater, empty sleeve carefully looped around its torso so as not to catch on anything.

“Delores,” Luther whispers.

They know where they are.

In the ever-present silence, there’s a soft clatter of rock being disturbed. It’s startling after the nothing of before. A voice floats over to them, scratchy and hoarse, “…we’ve been through here before but we always miss stuff, you know that. And no point in wasting a trip not looking. Remember last time? We found those antibiotics. They came in handy. And here! Look! The wood must have rotted enough to shift this rock…”

A figure appears from around the side of the rubble. Allison forgets to breathe. The man is obviously and impossibly thin. Even from this distance she can see how his battered jacket and pants practically hang off of him. He’s wearing a dirty and stained bucket hat on his head to block the sun and a bandana wrapped around his face, obscuring most of it. Goggles hang around his neck. His boots are tall and incredibly worn.

It doesn’t matter that he’s completely covered, that she can’t see his face. There’s only one person this can be.

Five _._

Five keeps chattering to Delores as he pokes around the debris pile, throwing a chunk of wood to his wagon. A constant monologue. Luther is still frozen next to her, staring at their brother. Allison holds her breath, waiting for Five to notice them.

The seconds stretch on into minutes. Five continues talking to himself, paying them no mind. Luther glances down at her, question clear in his expression. She looks back up at him, just as helpless. She has no idea if they should interrupt Five or not. What the consequences of that would be for future Five, their Five.

Although, they don’t actually have many other options. They know Five is literally the only other person here. There is no one else who can help them. And judging on the state of things around her, they are years into the apocalypse, maybe even decades. Five would have honed survival into an art by this point. They won’t last long on their own. And they just need to last long enough for Five, their Five, to find where they are and scoop them out.

She refuses to think about any alternative to that.

Looking back up at Luther, she can tell he’s come to the same conclusion. She shrugs. He firms his jaw before looking back over at their brother. “Hey, Five!” he calls. His voice is once again shocking in the quiet.

Five freezes for a moment, breaking his monologue, before he goes back to poking through the debris and talking to himself. Luther frowns and starts walking over. Allison follows, a few feet behind. “Five!” Luther calls again.

As they get closer, Five’s mumblings get easier to hear. “…of course I see them. You know I can’t interact with them. I don’t care if it would be nice. It’s pretend. I can’t afford to distract myself like that. You remember how that worked out that one winter. Stop, no. You’re not like that, Delores, you know that. You’re safe. I won’t forget with you–“

“Five?” Allison tries, interrupting him. He resolutely ignores them, getting more agitated as he digs through some bricks to pull out a long scrap of cloth.

“It makes sense I’d see them over here, we’re close to there. I should have expected this. It’s ok though. I know. I know! They’ll go away. They always do. I just have to keep focused. What do you mean they look different? No, I’m not going to look, that’s a terrible idea.” Five jerkily scratches at his nose as he talks to Delores and keeps his back to them.

They’re only a few feet away. Luther stops again, unsure what to do. Allison doesn’t know either. Five obviously thinks they’re a hallucination, which honestly is a fair assumption to make when he knows they’re dead and he’s the only person on Earth at the moment.

Now that they’re right next to him, it’s easy to see how small he is. Their current Five, stuck at thirteen, is tiny. This Five isn’t all that much bigger. He’s grown a few inches, he’s maybe an inch taller than Allison is, now. He is so, so skinny though. His hands are practically skeletal as he rummages around, his wrist bones jut out from where they peek under his sleeves.

Luther sighs deeply and slowly reaches out a hand. Allison doesn’t know if she should stop him or not. Carefully, gently, he rests his massive hand on Five’s slim shoulder. Five startles so hard he almost falls into the bricks. Space warps around him for a moment but it quickly fizzles out and he doesn’t go anywhere. He spins around, practically plastered against the wall of rubble and stares at them with wide, wild eyes, gasping for breath.

Five has always had an intense stare. It’s piercing and shrewd and makes people uncomfortable. This stare is that but turned up to an eleven. His green eyes flick between them, intense but with this… otherness to it. Allison doesn’t even know the word she wants to describe it, it’s just deeply off. Something missing. Luther takes a small step back at the force of it.

“How—why—wh—you—” Five stutters. He looks over at Delores and back to them.

Allison smiles the kindest smile she can manage. “Hey, Five. Good to see you.”

He pulls down his bandana to reveal a sloppily trimmed beard covering the deep hollows of his cheeks. Allison wants to cry at it. Five is old enough to grow a beard, here. He licks his cracked, chapped lips. His eyes still flicker between them. He looks at Delores, again. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he tells her. He glances at them and then immediately away, like he’s afraid to look but also afraid they’re going to disappear if he doesn’t.

“I know it’s a lot, Five,” Luther says slowly, “but we are really here. We can explain.”

Five turns to Delores. “They can’t be here. That doesn’t make any sense. I’m just—just—just extra dehydrated. I shouldn’t have skipped breakfast. I shouldn’t have come all this way in the middle of the day, it’s too hot. That’s the only explanation. You were right, I should have waited until a cloudy day. But it had been a while since I visited and this is what I get for not listening to you. Yes, I’m saying it so you won’t lord it over me for the next month. This is me saying you were right, I was wrong.” He’s slipped back into his constant chatter to Delores, the rhythm obviously familiar to him.

Allison interrupts him, “Is there somewhere we can sit and talk? We can explain everything. Or as much as we think we can without ruining your future.”

This catches his attention. She watches him silently debate himself for a moment as to whether or not keep talking to his probable hallucinations for more information. As she knew it would, his need for information wins out. “You know me? In the future? I get out?” His hoarse voice cracks painfully at the end.

“We do, Five. You figure it out,” Luther says gently.

Five rubs a hand roughly along his jaw as he thinks about that. It rasps against his choppy beard in the quiet. He’s so close to believing them, he just needs a final push. Carefully, Allison holds out a hand and waits. Five stares at the offered hand for a long moment. Slowly, gaze flickering between her hand and her face like this is a trick, he reaches his own thin hand out.

He flinches back slightly when he makes contact but instantly reaches out again. Rough, calloused fingers ghost over her hand. Allison waits patiently. Five’s expression flickers, emotions flashing over it. He looks up to meet her gaze. “You are here,” he whispers. She smiles and nods, still not moving. Immediately, Five grasps her hand in an iron grip, almost painful in how tight it is. He stares at them in hungry wonder.

“Is there a shadier spot we can sit and talk in?” Allison asks after a long moment. Five blinks and looks around them, not letting her hand go.

He clears his throat, “Yeah, yeah. Sure. There’s um. Over here.” He glances between Allison’s hand and Delores and after a moment he slowly releases her hand so he can pick up Delores. With her cradled in his arms, he leads them around the mountain of rubble. He keeps looking over his shoulder in wonder, delighted every time they’re still there and haven’t disappeared in the wind.

After a short walk, he stops in front of what obviously used to be a café. The wrought iron tables and chairs still stand on the mostly clear sidewalk, shaded by its tattered awning. Five lovingly places Delores on one of the chairs, adjusting her hat and retucking her sleeve out of the way before taking a seat himself. Allison pulls one up across from him while Luther gingerly sits on another, wary if it will hold his weight or not.

“So, I do it. I figure it out,” Five says, not waiting for them to be settled before he starts talking. “This is good, I knew I could do it,” he tells Delores.

Allison hopes her smile doesn’t look as pained as it feels. Although, Five hasn’t seen another person make any expression in years so he probably wouldn’t be able to tell anyway. “You do!” she says. She does not say he’s probably decades away from it. Speaking of, how old is he…?

“How old are you, Five?” Luther asks, beating her to it.

He looks up at them from Delores, “Hm? Oh.” He thinks about it for a moment. “Twenty-four? Twenty-five? I’m pretty sure twenty-five. Definitely not twenty-six, not yet.” Allison closes her eyes against that answer. He still has thirty years to go here. Luther looks slightly constipated, trying to hide how much an emotional punch Five’s answer was.

Five immediately jumps to the most important question, the only one that really matters, “You’re here, so you can tell me. What causes it? What ends everything?” His intense gaze bores into them, slightly manic.

Allison exchanges a worried glance with Luther. She doesn’t know how much they can tell him. Five had hammered into them the dangers of messing with the timeline, their time in the sixties a prime example of how their (mostly) good intentions still destroyed everything. Allison is especially wary, here, because she desperately doesn’t want to ruin Five’s future escape. If he knows too much, the Commission might leave him here. And while he probably would figure out the math, judging by how thin he is now he won’t have the energy he needs to actually make the jump to get out and back to them. When future Five picks them up she’ll ask him if they can just tell this Five everything. It’s a compromise she has to make with herself to live with what she’s about to do.

“It’s hard to believe but it was Va—” Luther starts.

“I don’t know if we can tell you,” Allison quickly interrupts, kicking Luther’s shin. He frowns at her. She ignores him. Five furrows his brow. “I’m worried if we reveal too much, we’ll change the timeline too much for you and ruin how you get out of here.”

Luther mutters a quiet, “Ah.”

Five works his jaw as he thinks about that. “That… makes sense. Time is fickle. And if I’m close to figuring out how to get out we should be wary of any big changes. I told you Rothstein’s was the right direction to go in. I know you think he’s too loose in his applications but the work underneath it is still valid, a good base. And looks like I was right!” He’s gone back to talking to Delores. He pulls his hat off as he mutters math at her so he can run a hand through his dirty hair while he thinks. It’s sloppily chopped short like his beard is, like he took a knife and just hacked at it because it was in his way. That’s probably exactly what he did.

“Tell me though,” he suddenly turns back to them and it takes Allison a moment to realize he’s talking to them again. He reaches into a pocket on his jacket and pulls out a small cloth. Carefully unwrapping it, he holds out Harold Jenkin’s eye. Luther inhales sharply at it. Its brown iris stares back at them, mocking. “You were holding this because it belongs to the person who ends the world, right? A hint isn’t too much. A hint won’t break anything. You can tell me that.”

Luther swallows and shoots a glance at Allison before he answers, “It belongs to the man who ends the world.” Allison nods. Five was already convinced of that when he arrived. This doesn’t change anything. And it’s not a lie, just not anywhere close to the whole truth.

It still feels like a dirty trick.

Five carefully wraps it back up mumbling, “I knew it. I knew it!” to himself.

As he tucks it back away, a thought obviously hits him and his whole face folds in distress. His gaze snaps up to them, “Wait, no, no, no, wait, wait – you two can’t be here. This is… this is bad. You shouldn’t be here, it’s not safe. It’s not good. No one should be here. You two, especially, you shouldn’t have to experience this, you don’t deserve that. How _did_ you two get here?” The sudden emotional shift startles them both.

Luther glances at her. He’s letting her handle this one now she’s committed them to hiding everything from Five. Allison sighs as she thinks on how to phrase it. “There was… an accident. We were time traveling to… fix something, and Luther and I got misplaced.” She’s once again grateful Five hasn’t seen people in a decade and was shit at them to begin with because she’s doing an awful job controlling her expression as she makes up this lie. Some Hollywood actress she is. “So, it’s ok, it’s just a little hiccup for us. You don’t have to worry about us being stuck here. I don’t know how long we’ll be here with you, but future you will probably find us soon and take us back home.”

God, she really hopes that’s true.

Five relaxes as she reassures him, choosing to believe her. His eyes widen at the mention of his future self being here. “He could tell me how to do it. Delores, he could solve it all. We could leave by next week.” The hope on his face twists a knife into Allison’s gut. He’s flipping between emotions so quickly, she’s getting whiplash. She smiles weakly at him, unsure if she should pop his bubble or not. There is no way Five will help his past self out like that.

His face falls after moment as he thinks some more. “You’re right, Delores. I wouldn’t. To keep existing as things happened for him, he’d need me to do it the same way, figure it out myself. I obviously succeed, so we should be careful about altering things too much, Allison was right about that. Avoid a paradox.” Allison and Luther both grimace at that. They didn’t succeed. On their first try, anyway. They did succeed a smattering of years and three timelines later. Five works his jaw some more, eyes haunted. “That’s ok. I’m close. I can wait to get it right myself, even if it takes a few more years. We’ve got a system down, couple more years is nothing. We can do that. For my family. I can do that.”

Allison hugs herself. She feels like the worst sister in the world. Maybe they should just tell him everything. In her mind, Five’s voice, her Five, tells her very sharply to keep doing what she’s doing. The timeline depends on it.

She’s not sure if she should tell it to fuck off or not.

Luther and Allison sit in miserable silence while Five keeps chattering at Delores, combination making plans and talking about math at random. He talks constantly. She doesn’t know how he’s doing it when he hasn’t had anything to drink since they’ve run into him. Does explain the raspy, painfully hoarse quality his voice has, she supposes. He has a hard time regulating his volume, varying wildly between talking too quietly and too loudly.

She tries to see the Five she knows in this jabbering man in front of her. It’s hard. The only part of him she really recognizes is his nose, the slight curve to it. His eyes, almost, but there’s that vacancy to them, like he’s always looking just past them and doesn’t actually see them. He’s just so gaunt, his cheekbones stick out sharp and his eyes sit in dark hallows, half of his face hidden under his unkept beard. It makes it hard to match him to the thirteen-year-old face she knows so well.

This Five hasn’t been silent for longer than a minute, she thinks, constantly filling the empty quiet around him. She can’t imagine him being able to wait, patiently, for his target to appear so he can efficiently and ruthlessly off them, not with his constant fidgeting and talking. She also can’t picture him bodily taking down a room full of highly trained agents, and that’s something she’s seen their Five do multiple times. This Five is so thin, he looks like a stiff wind could blow him over. How did Five come out the other side of this, a mostly functional person and a hyper-successful assassin?

Eventually, sitting there watching him talk to Delores gets too depressing. “You said you were heading somewhere?” Luther asks. “We can go there with you.”

“You don’t need to see that,” Five answers immediately.

“We don’t mind. You said you hadn’t been there in a while and sounds like it’s a bit of a trek. We don’t want to waste your effort like that,” Allison says with a frown. What is he trying to hide from them?

Five exchanges a glance with Delores. Well, he looks at her. Delores stares in vaguely his direction, vacant and plastic as always. “Ok,” he says after a moment, surprising Allison. She was expecting an argument, or at least another long-winded answer. Five stands and carefully picks Delores up before heading back in the direction they came. Allison and Luther are left to scramble after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spend a lot of time thinking about Five in the apocalypse. The logistics of that. A hard part of writing this was I kept thinking of more logistics he'd need to address but ended up deleting because boy howdy was it awful for pacing. Luther and Allison don't need to know nor care about everything he has stockpiled. I do though.
> 
> Baby's first multi-chapter fic! Not sure the update schedule, maybe once a week. I've got this about 95% written tho so I'll probably get impatient and speed that puppy up once I'm finished. Just a little chunk in the middle to transition that's giving me issues (because I don't want to get rid of apocalypse-living-logistics but it's not needed for the story...)
> 
> Anyway - the usual. No beta so let me know if there's any wonky issues so I can fix them.
> 
> Love to hear your thoughts, in the comments or you can hit me up on tumblr at sharkneto!


	2. Icarus and Argyle

Back at his wagon, Five balances Delores on her perch and leads them down a nearby block. Luther and Allison trudge with him. Luther offers to pull the wagon because watching Five, as spindly as he is, heave it along is just sad. Five lets him for all of thirty seconds before he’s grabbing it back, relief palpable when he has all his belongings in his own control again.

They let Five get a ways in front of them. As they walk, he keeps shooting looks over his shoulder at them. He’s obviously excited they’re here with him. It is also obvious he has no clue what he’s supposed to do with them. After a while, he starts singing to himself, a tuneless song that is either a horrendous bastardization of an actual song or something he made up himself. It echoes off the silent ruins around them.

Luther leans towards her and mutters, “He’s insane.”

Allison nods. She’s sort of always had her suspicions. The Five that came back to them is a weird guy. “What, you didn’t sing to yourself on the moon?” she teases. He splutters for a second before she takes pity on him. She sighs, “I know what you mean. He’s been alone for over a decade, though, so maybe we should be grateful he’s not worse. It kills me that we know he still has thirty years to go.”

“Maybe Five will get him out of here,” Luther says, not sounding like he believes it. Allison hums in agreement. It’s the lie they need right now. “Speaking of Five,” he continues, “when do you think he’ll show up to get us out?”

She shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. I hope it’s soon, though. I don’t want to use any of Five’s supplies if we can help it. He looks like things are tight.” Luther nods, glancing up at their thin brother ahead of them. He’s switched to a new, unrecognizable tune. It sounds a little like a song she vaguely remembers Vanya practicing when they were kids.

Talking is too much work with how dry her mouth and throat are, so they quickly lapse back into silence. The effort reminds her uncomfortably of those months building her voice back up after Vanya slit her throat. She rubs the thin scar on her neck.

They follow Five and his one-man band. After a while, he switches back to talking about his math to Delores. They turn down a street and suddenly, Allison knows where they are. The buildings are still hollow shells, but there’s one massive one in the middle of the block. She hasn’t been there often, but through the broken walls she recognizes the rows and rows of tattered seats, all pointed towards a large open space where the stage once stood.

They’re at the Icarus.

Five parks his wagon near a blocked door, checks that Delores is settled alright, and clambers over a low wall to enter the ruin. Allison and Luther cautiously follow him.

Inside the theater, there are six mounds of rubble that stick out. They’re purposeful. The first one is awkwardly out of line with the others, shunted slightly to the side. The pile is huge, bricks upon bricks. There’s a broken telescope on top of it along with some posters about planets and space, most of them weathered and faded beyond recognition. A piece of sheet metal pokes out from it, a clumsy _1_ painted on it.

Luther gasps at it.

Allison’s eyes prickle. She understands why Five didn’t want to bring them.

She forces herself to look at the other mounds. They’re all smaller and lined up along where the stage used to be, its rotting lumber a dark backdrop for them. _2, 3, 4, 6, 7_. Each has items and trinkets piled on top of it, carefully selected for each sibling. Diego’s has just a ridiculous number of knives, which makes her smile, and a rusty detective badge sits in a place of pride at the front. Hers has an entire TV on it, its antennas bent and screen smashed. There’s a dented film reel leaning up against it, too. Klaus’ has rags all over it, which she thinks might have been clothes, once. A half-melted plastic ghost, a Halloween decoration, peeks out from one side. She knows Klaus would laugh at it.

The next two are smaller, which makes sense. They don’t have to cover bodies. Books cover Ben’s. From the few titles she can still read on their ruined spines they’re all old favorites of his. Vanya’s is simply decorated with a white violin, stringless and cracked and mocking in its terrible irony.

Each one also has a tattered umbrella spread behind it, enveloping their numbers.

There’s a conspicuous gap between the _4_ and _6_ piles, a halfhearted ring of rocks making a shallow bed in the space. A space large enough for someone very small and very thin to lay down and not get back up from. Her tears finally start falling.

“That’s a waste of water,” Five tells her. He’s snuck up and is standing at her elbow, looking melancholically at the graves he made for them all. Luther is still frozen looking at his own grave. Five glances at him, “I couldn’t move you. You were too big. So I couldn’t put you in the right spot.”

Luther clears his throat noisily. “That’s ok, Five,” he says, impossibly quiet.

Five leaves her side to go sit on one of the few functional chairs, the padding long gone but the metal frame still sturdy. It is almost front and center to their graves, a perfect spot to sit and still see them all. She carefully picks her way over to him and sits on a chunk of what she thinks used to be part of the ceiling. “When did you find us?” she asks quietly.

Five doesn’t answer right away. She thinks he might not, which would be fair. She can’t imagine finding her entire family dead. Even now, with the proof in front of her, the fact that they all died feels fake. Seeing her own grave is weird, pretend like it’s a prop for a movie. She can’t be dead because she’s standing right here looking at it. Is this what it felt like for Ben, gone but still right there?

He breaks her from her thoughts, “On the fifth day.” Allison sighs. He was thirteen years old when he found them all. No wonder he couldn’t move Luther. He probably used up a lot of very precious energy moving them all and making these monuments to them. She very slowly reaches an arm out and wraps it around Five’s thin shoulders. He stiffens for a long moment before he cautiously, painfully slowly, leans into her side.

“Do you know why I couldn’t find Vanya?” he mumbles. “I know why I didn’t find Ben. But where was Vanya?”

Allison sniffles. “I don’t know.” It’s an honest answer. Vanya was here, the white violin is proof of that, but she doesn’t know why he didn’t find her body. Her Five thinks Vanya destroyed herself with the world, the amount of energy she expended wiping her into nothing. Maybe he’s right.

As is usual with this Five, he keeps talking. She’s not sure he knows he’s doing it. “I meant to come on our birthday. That’s usually when I come. My annual pilgrimage to give you an update on where I’m at and make sure everything is still ok. Sometimes I need to bring replacement things. But there was a freak snowstorm last year, so I couldn’t come. Didn’t thaw and dry out enough to make this safe to do until a few weeks ago.”

“That’s ok, Five,” she murmurs back. “We understand.”

A massive arm appears around Allison. Luther has sat down on Five’s other side and wrapped them both in his long reach. Five goes through the same routine, stiffening at the sudden contact before allowing himself to relax and lean into it.

“They’re really nice, Five. Thank you,” Luther rumbles, low voice vibrating through them both.

Five just nods. After a beat he says, “You guys know I didn’t mean to leave, right? I’ve been trying to get back the whole time. It’s just hard. The math doesn’t exist, yet.”

Allison tightens her grip around him. His boney shoulder pokes into her side. “We know, Five. We know,” she says around the large lump in her throat.

The three of them sit together in the quiet of the end of the world, the six graves their only company.

Eventually, Allison breaks the silence to quietly say, “You can still give us your update, if you want, Five. Luther and I can step away if that makes it easier. I don’t want us to interrupt anything for you.”

After a moment, Five says, “You can stay. It’s for you, anyway.” And he launches into another monologue. It’s depressing as hell, his painful, scratchy voice monotonously running through the highlights of his past year of survival. He tells them about how he almost ran out of food because the winter started earlier than he thought it would, surprising him. He tells them about the piano he found in the lobby of a ruined hotel that he likes to go poke at for noise when he has time. It’s horrendously out of tune but he likes having a different sound to break the silence with. He tells them how he broke two fingers on his right hand and had to set them before they swelled too much and how lucky he is that he’s left-handed. He tells them the state of his math, about the setback he had last spring when he realized the base he’d been using was founded on a flawed idea so he’d had to scrap months of work. He tells them how much he misses them and that he’ll see them all soon. He’s close, he can feel it.

Allison is openly weeping when Five’s hoarse voice finally stops. Luther isn’t in much better shape. Five just sits between them, expression sad but he doesn’t cry. She’s going to assume he hasn’t cried in years, which is tragic in its own right when he has so much to cry about.

Jesus fucking Christ and he has thirty more years of this. How the hell did Five survive for thirty more years of this. Allison has been here all of three hours and she’s already done. She wants out.

Five heaves a sigh and then wiggles out from between them to stand. “Come on. We need to get moving so we can get back before it gets dark.” Allison and Luther clumsily wipe at their eyes and sniffle. She has a headache now, from the crying and probably dehydration. Five doesn’t wait for them, already picking his way back to where he left Delores.

Allison and Luther sit numbly for a long moment, staring at their graves. She knows she needs to stop crying and pull herself together. Five is waiting for them and it’s not productive on multiple levels, a waste of water and energy. Luther stands and gently tugs her up and into a hug.

“I’m ok,” Allison says into his chest, “it’s just–“

“I know,” he says, voice rough.

When they think they’ve recovered enough to fake some positivity for Five, they climb back up. Five is sitting next to Delores, waiting for them, talking quietly to her. He studies them as they stop in front of him. He grabs his canteen and holds it out.

Allison understands what a gift this is. The apocalypse is dry, at least right now, hot and dusty. Water must be hard to come by. She gingerly takes it, trying to communicate her thanks through her smile. It’s probably lost on Five. She takes the tiniest sip she can manage, forcing herself to stop almost as soon as the water hits her tongue even as her brain screams at her to chug it. The water tastes awful, stale and plasticky. It at least washes away the crusty, dusty feeling, even if now she’s ten times thirstier. She gives Luther a warning glance as she passes the canteen to him. He follows her example and takes a tiny sip before handing it back to Five.

Five takes a measured drink, larger than theirs, and tucks it back in its spot. He checks Delores one more time and then they’re heading back the way they came. Luther and Allison fall into step behind him again. They try to rope Five into a conversation but he keeps forgetting he’s talking to them and starts directing back to Delores. Eventually they give up. He goes back to singing.

It’s hard to keep track of time in the apocalypse. The sun moves slowly across the sky and the hazy air makes it tricky to track. Five usually has an impeccable internal clock, but Allison isn’t sure if this Five’s clock is working; he’s not even sure how old he is. She thinks they walk for an hour and a half, maybe a little more. It’s slow going, too, because Five keeps pausing to dig in rubble, climb into decrepit buildings, and generally scavenge. He adds bits of wood, scraps, odds and ends to his wagon. Allison keeps getting surprised by corpses. Five doesn’t even give them a second glance.

She’s broken from her thoughts about how miserable this place is by Five calling back to them, excited. “Luther!” he shouts. “Luther! Move this! Delores we can get in here. I bet there’s something. Probably kept good, too, underground like this. Luther!” They find him standing by cellar door, half covered by a massive chunk of concrete.

Luther obliges, carefully pushing the block off the door with little effort. Five is practically vibrating, he’s so excited. He never would have been able to move it himself, not in a million years. For good measure, Luther pulls the hatch open, too.

Five doesn’t dive in like she expects him to. Instead, he peers in and experimentally steps down on the first step. He takes a couple more slow steps down and pushes up on the floor above him, testing it. Content it’s not going to collapse around him, he digs a small crank flashlight out of his jacket. Glancing over his shoulder, he frowns at Delores. “I’ll be fine. There’s not much to cave in. It looks pretty small, too, so it shouldn’t have much stress at the middle. You worry too much.” With that, he disappears into the darkness. Allison holds her breath, waiting for something to go wrong.

Five whoops and she almost has a heart attack until she realizes it was in delight. He reappears a moment later, arms full of wine. “I knew this would be a good one! What did I tell you, Delores! There’s so much down there. We’ll have to come back tomorrow, with the big cart. They were preppers! MRE’s for days, we’re going to eat so well. And water!”

He makes a few trips down, bringing up a stack of MRE’s and a case of plastic water bottles. With the wine, it’s too much to fit in his wagon. Five spends the next few minutes rearranging his haul, removing most of the wood and stacking it near the cellar entrance to come back and get later. He chatters with Delores the whole time, throwing out comments to Luther and Allison as he remembers they’re there. Luther saves them another round of rearranging when he volunteers to carry the water. 

Finally, they’re back on their way. Allison’s feet hurt, her head still hurts, and her mouth feels like something died in it, it is so dry. She’s exhausted. She doesn’t know how Five is still going; she had a solid breakfast this morning and has been eating regular meals her whole life. Five hasn’t eaten the whole day and told them in his update that he’d almost starved to death only a month or so ago.

After another half hour of walking, Luther mutters, “Ah. That makes sense.” Argyle Public Library towers in front of them. Or, the shell of it does. The entire inside is empty, nothing but rubble. It’s just giant columns, the back wall completely gone.

Near the center, there’s a cleared area, an obvious firepit in the middle. Two weathered chairs sit on either side of it. Piles of supplies are stacked around the space: cast iron pots and pans, large drums to collect rainwater, wood piled under a small metal lean-to. Five has rigged some sort of retractable sunshade for the area, too. A line of little solar lanterns are neatly placed along one edge, charging in the setting sun. Five grabs one as they walk past.

He leads them through it all and parks his wagon near a set of stairs going down. He scoops up Delores, one of the wine bottles, and heads down. Luther is still carrying the water and Allison grabs the MRE’s from the wagon before following him.

It is intensely dark in the basement but thankfully cooler than outside. At the bottom of the stairs, Five pushes a mirror slightly and light from above bounces off of it, reflecting into another mirror farther down that reflects to another mirror to dimly light the narrow hallway. Allison feels a swell of love for her clever brother. Five leads them to the farthest door, where the reflected light barely reaches. He opens the door and clicks on his little lantern.

She thinks the room used to be a large office of some sort. There’s built in shelving on either side of the door when they step in. Five has filled them with physics books and baskets of repair tools – cloth scraps, sewing kits, metal odds and ends. The floor still has its ratty carpet, impossibly worn now and full of holes. She thinks it might have been green, once. In one corner, there’s a massive chalk board, filled with equations in Five’s familiar lefty-scrawl. The walls are covered in more math. A heavy wooden desk has been pushed against the wall and plastic bins full of clothes are stacked on top of it, off the ground and carefully taped where they’ve cracked to keep bugs out of them. In the far corner, there’s two honestly disgusting cushions, stained with stuffing sticking out. Another bin of what looks to be blankets sits next to it. That must be where Five sleeps, she realizes with a start.

“Where should we put these?” Luther asks. Five looks back at them like he’s surprised they’re in his home.

“Right.” He sets Delores on a well cushioned chair by the desk, carefully taking her hat off and setting it to the side before he walks towards a door at the far end of the room that Allison had missed in her first sweep of the room.

It’s obviously Five’s storeroom. He has to tug hard to pull the door open, he’s taken care to try and seal the cracks around it to keep pests out. One corner is dedicated to medical supplies, pill bottles in careful rows on the shelves and rolls of bandages piled neatly. There’s also a stack of first-aid kits, probably all horrendously expired along with the medicines, on the top. The rest of the shelves are filled with cans of food, although they are worryingly sparse. Five sets the wine in a robust pile of alcohol near the door and sends Luther farther back to a much smaller supply of water. He takes the MRE’s from Allison and sorts them between a few shelves in a system she can’t even begin to guess at.

Five ushers them out again and pauses to squint at Delores. “Right, right. No, you’re right I need to…” he trails off into mumbling to himself and turns back into the storage room. Luther nudges her and nods towards the opposite corner. From this angle, they can see a small collection of Umbrella Academy merchandise, carefully arranged across from Five’s bed on the end of the built-in shelves. A lunchbox with their little cartoon faces is front and center.

Christ, Five loves them so much. Allison has to blink back more tears.

Five pushes past them, arms full. He juggles for a moment so he can pick up Delores, too, and heads out. A moment after he disappears around the corner, they hear his voice call back, “Come on!” They follow.

Back outside, he sets Delores on one of the chairs and dumps his load next to the fire pit. A series of cans and two water bottles roll out. Five dithers for a moment, mumbling as always and searching around himself. Luther realizes what his problem is first and pulls a large chunk of rubble closer to sit on. Allison follows his example and grabs a big rusty pot. Five relaxes a bit once they’re settled.

He passes them each a couple cans and a bottle of water and grabs his canteen for himself. Allison stares at the cans in her hands, one full of baked beans and the other meat. She doesn’t want to eat them. She is hungry but she feels like shit thinking that when she knows her brother is literally starving. She had a decent breakfast just a few hours ago and has been eating fine for her whole life. What she’s holding in her hands might be an entire day’s worth of food for Five.

She glances at what Five is eating. He’s already cracked open one of his cans with a knife (one of Diego’s knives, she recognizes with a pang) and is scooping dog food out with his fingers. His other can is dog food, too. He gave them beans and canned meat. Now she absolutely can’t eat them if he’s sitting there eating goddamn dog food so they could have something better.

There’s also the practical thought that she probably can’t actually eat these. They expired seven years ago. Five has to have a stomach of titanium at this point. Allison does not and is confident all these will do is give her a spectacular case of food poisoning. She’s going to continue on the assumption that her Five will be there to pick them up in a day or two. If he’s not, they can revisit the food problem then. She can survive a day or two with no food.

It’s practically just a Hollywood diet.

“Thank you, Five, but I’m not really hungry,” she says, setting the cans down. Luther is watching her out of the corner of his eye and she tries to communicate silently that he doesn’t have to follow her in this. His giant body has a giant metabolism. Skipping out on food might not be as simple for him.

“Yeah, Five, we had a big breakfast before we came. You should save these for later,” Luther says, piling his cans next to hers.

Five frowns at them and swallows. “Are you sure? You have to keep your strength up here.”

Allison gives him a sad smile, “I know. Thank you, again. But like Luther said, we had a big breakfast before we landed here. We’ll be fine until tomorrow.”

He squints at both of them. “Ok,” he says slowly. “But you have to drink the water. That’s a bigger problem if you don’t stay hydrated.” He points seriously at them with a finger coated in dog food. Allison cracks open her water bottle and takes a small sip. It tastes terrible. Five nods approvingly. Compromise reached.

Allison watches Five work his way through the first can, mechanically shoving the lumpy pâté into his mouth. She narrows her eyes. He’s favoring the right side of his mouth. “Does your mouth hurt?” she asks him.

Five shrugs. “A bit.”

She knows Five is a tank when it comes to physical pain. If he’s favoring it and admitting it hurts a bit, it must be agony. “Bad tooth?” she asks. She doesn’t know why she’s pushing. It’s not like she can do anything for him about it.

“Yeah. Molar. I’ve been gargling with salt water for it but I think I’m gonna have to pull it.” Luther almost spits his water. Five is so casual about it.

“You’re going to pull out your own tooth?” Luther asks.

Five rolls his eyes. “Oh, sure, silly me. Let me just run to the dentist around the corner.”

Allison barks out a surprised laugh. Five beams that his joke landed and glances at Delores. His expression falls a second later and he looks back to Allison. “Dentists are the teeth ones, right?”

Her smile feels tighter. “Yes, dentists are the teeth ones.” His smile brightens again. To be fair to Five, they never went to dentists as kids. Mom took care of it. He has almost no experience and no reason to remember them.

The sun finishes setting as they sit there, Luther and Allison sipping on their water and Five mechanically eating with his hands. With all the dust in the air, the sunset is stunning. Reds and oranges and yellows fire up the sky. Five barely looks at it, focused on his food. Allison watches it paint the ruined landscape.

As darkness falls, the loneliness of the end of the world intensifies. Shadows creep in and the jagged shapes of the rubble around them become ominous. A sliver of moon rises over the horizon, genuinely surprising Allison even though Five has explained to them that Vanya didn’t destroy the moon in his apocalypse; she destroyed the world all on her own.

Five licks his fingers, done eating. Allison was relieved he traded for beans for his second course. He’s frowning at Delores. She must be saying something to him.

“It’s not a fire night, though,” Five says, then tilts his head in consideration of whatever point Delores just made. “That is a good point. This is a special occasion. And we can still use it, just have to adjust the schedule a little bit, that’s ok. You’re right. And we’ll get that other wood tomorrow.” Five gets up.

“You know, Five,” Allison quickly says, “I’m pretty tired. If we’re going to be heading to bed soon, anyway, we don’t need to have a fire. Maybe tomorrow night or whatever your usual fire night is.”

“What would you be doing if we weren’t here?” Luther asks.

“Going to bed. Usually, I’d work on the math but today was different than the usual day. I went to visit you.”

Luther yawns exaggeratedly, “Let’s go to bed, then.”

Five shrugs. Night falls quickly in the apocalypse and it’s already getting hard to see each other in the dusk, the moon not full enough to provide any real light. Five’s footsteps crunch away from them and with a small click he’s illuminated by one of his lanterns. He hands it out towards Allison and she accepts it. Cleaning up from dinner, he absent mindedly flings the empty cans out into the darkness, which makes Allison smile, and scoops up the leftovers to return to his pantry. Delores in hand, they go back down.

With the second lantern in Five’s room, it’s actually almost homey feeling, not cheery but at least well-lit and a little cozy with them all in there together. Five chews on his thumb as he surveys the room, Delores balanced on his hip, trying to think where to put them to sleep. There’s not all that much room.

Luther steps in, again, “Here, I can sleep leaning against the wall for one night. Allison can lay against me. We can figure out something better tomorrow when there’s more light and we aren’t all tired from walking all day.”

“Are you sure?” Allison asks him. He waves her off. He’s running off the same assumption she is that they’re not going to be here long and is trying to keep everything as easy as possible for Five.

“Yeah. If I have a blanket or something it’s not a big deal.”

Five perks up at the mention of a blanket – an actionable thing he can take care of. He lays Delores down on his bed and drags his bin of blankets over. He cracks it open and carefully sorts through it, selecting blankets to give them.

Allison very quickly picks up on his pattern. They’re obviously all his good blankets – the least stained, the least threadbare, the most whole. As he tries to hand a sixth blanket to her, leaving what looks like a few truly ragged scraps for himself, Allison refuses, “Wait, Five. It’s not that cold we don’t need all these blankets. And we’ll be sleeping together, we’ll share body heat.”

She grimaces at her word choice. If it were any other sibling standing in front of them, they’d be getting ruthlessly teased right now. They’re _friends_. They had a fucked-up childhood and only knew six other people their age, so they got their feelings a bit mixed up. It’s sorted, it’s over. He’s her _brother_.

But it’s Five, so he just frowns at them. “You’re on the floor, though. And it gets colder at night.”

They also aren’t skin and bones like Five is. Her heart aches, she loves her brother so much. He has almost nothing and he’s been trying to take care of them the whole time they’ve been here. But he’s technically their little brother, right now. It’s their turn to try and take care of him, at least for the little time they have with him.

“We’ll be ok, Five. Like Luther said, it’s one night. If it doesn’t work, we can figure something better out tomorrow with a fresh day.”

Allison manages to negotiate him down to three blankets, one of them a ratty one to go on the ground under Luther. She has a sneaking suspicion he still gave them his very best ones, but at least he has enough to still make a warm nest on his cushion.

Luther chooses a space next to the chalkboard, on the opposite side of the room from Five’s bed. He clumsily lowers himself down, Five hovering nearby to make sure they settle ok. It takes a little bit but they figure out a spot for Allison, leaning into his side and using his giant shoulder as a pillow. Her neck is going to hate her in the morning but, as they keep justifying, it’s one night.

They finally convince Five that yes, they are extremely comfy and are very tired and ready to go to sleep, there is nothing more they need him to do for them. Five leaves them one of the lanterns and they watch him bob around the room, going through his nightly routine, checking that everything is in its proper place.

At the desk, he cracks open another bin, this one only half full. Shrugging off his jacket, he carefully folds it and sets it inside. His boots follow, as do his pants. It leaves Five in a thin t-shirt, threadbare boxers, and some surprisingly thick socks. He is so thin. His muscles stand out in wiry ropes along his arms and legs. She knows if he wasn’t wearing that t-shirt, she’d be able to count every rib and every bump on his spine.

Allison is so grateful she won the blanket argument. Five is going to need every one of them to stay warm.

Five pulls his blankets into bed with him and takes a few minutes to arrange them around himself and Delores. Allison’s heart clenches painfully as he curls up around the mannequin, an arm slung over her plastic torso. Should they have offered to all pile together? Shit, they should have all piled together; how are they so bad at this? It feels too late to change, now. If they’re still here tomorrow night Allison resolves to do that instead.

With a click, he turns off his lantern. Luther follows with their lantern immediately. The darkness in the room is absolute. “Goodnight!” Allison calls over.

“Goodnight!” Five returns after a long pause and she can hear the smile in his voice.

Luther shifts under her, trying to find a comfortable spot on the wall. Allison waits for him to settle before she tries to find a comfortable angle of her own. Luther wraps a large arm around her and that helps. She has low expectations for finding any sleep tonight. Her only hope is sheer exhaustion. They spent the morning fighting the Commission and the afternoon following Five around the apocalypse; it’s been a long day

Her stomach grumbles, loudly, and Luther huffs a quiet laugh. She elbows him.

The last thought she has before she drifts off is how tired she’s going to be in the morning because she’s not going to get any sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a longer chunk but splitting it in two felt too choppy. I rewrote Five's camp like three times. I couldn't decide what his set up would look like, what would at least hypothetically sound like it could work. What I ended up with felt the most practical - underground means cooler in the summer, warmer in the winter. He's in the room farthest back from the opening at the stairs, so in the winter he's less likely to get snowed in and can still make a protected fire outside of his door without giving himself carbon monoxide poisoning. The show makes it look like he was pretty nomadic and he had a sort of tent set up in the library, but the tent just doesn't seem practical with the weather he's shown to be dealing with. All the books sitting exposed in the elements kills me. They'd be pulp at that point if he kept them all out in the open like that. So: Underground bunker it is.
> 
> I also have Thoughts on his canned food but that might make it into my Problem Section in the last chapter so I'll hold off on that until next author's note if it doesn't make the cut. I'm also playing with an epilogue so this might jump to four chapters.
> 
> Other side note: There's no way Five could survive in a world destroyed by the moon. My headcanon is that for his apocalypse, Vanya straight up just killed the entire world. A shockwave that cut out every electrical circuit, including biological ones. This doesn't quite work because I'm pretty sure that would also still kill bugs but shhh. It's based on a comic book there's only so far we can take logic and I will go right to the edge of that point to the best of my ability.
> 
> Anyway, love to hear your thoughts on this bit! Your comments last chapter were all so kind, you fill my heart T-T I had plans to respond to you all but you know, life, so just know I read and adore every one.


	3. Back

Morning comes, dark. Allison thinks it’s morning, at least, because she is awake. She was right last night – her neck is killing her now. She’s trying to figure out what woke her up when there’s another rustle from Five’s corner of the room. With a click, his lantern turns on and Allison has to close her eyes against the sudden brightness.

Five rolls out of his bed and pads to his desk of clothes. She can tell the exact moment he spots them, sprawled on the floor, because he freezes. A delighted smile splits his face. “Delores!” he whispers, too loudly, and turns to her. “They’re still here! It was real!”

“Morning, Five,” Allison whispers to him. She’s not sure if Luther is still asleep or not.

“Morning,” Luther rumbles from underneath her. That answers that.

“Good morning!” Five whispers back, still much too loud to probably count as a whisper. He quickly pulls on the same clothes he wore yesterday and folds up his blankets to put back in their bin. Allison and Luther stiffly get up so Five can put away their blankets, too.

Beds cleaned up, Five leads them back out into the apocalypse. It’s early morning outside. Allison is willing to bet it’s about seven o’clock, which makes her smile. Once an Umbrella Academy kid, always an Umbrella Academy kid. She still automatically wakes up at seven, too.

“What’s the plan today?” Luther asks, stretching to try and work the kinks out of his back.

Five has set Delores on her chair and marched over to a tarp at the edge of his cleared circle. With a loud crinkle he pulls it off to reveal a large, two-wheeled cart. “I’m going to go get the rest of those supplies from that cellar,” he says, attention on checking that the cart is in working order.

“And what about us?” Allison asks.

He looks up to frown at them, “You?”

“Yeah, what can we do? Do you have any projects around here we could help with?”

“Oh.” Five glances at Delores, looking lost. “Um.”

She’s blind-sided him. His brow furrows as he continues staring at his plastic wife, trying to think of something they can do.

“Yes! Good idea,” he tells her after a long moment. He looks back at them, pleased with himself for having come up with something. “You can, if you, um, this way.” Five leaves his cart and clumsily waves at them to follow him. He leads them around the edge of the library’s rubble and pauses to glance back at Delores. He rubs at his choppy beard, hand rasping against it, before deciding to leave her there. Looking back one more time, he guides them around a corner and she is lost from sight.

After a short walk, he stops. They’re at a relatively clear patch, dirt below their feet and only small mounds of rubble breaking up the space. A half-standing wall blocks some of the wind. Five nods to himself as he looks at the area. “Yeah, this is good.”

When it becomes clear he’s not going to elaborate why he brought them here, Allison prompts, “What do you want us to do here, Five?”

He frowns at them like they’re stupid. It’s endearing and familiar. “For the garden.”

It clarifies nothing. “Can you—Why don’t you tell us exactly what you want us to do, to be sure we do it right,” Luther says.

Five rolls his eyes. “I need you to clear out this rubble. From the edge of that wall to about twenty feet that way. Or as much as you can, at least. The cans aren’t going to be edible for much longer, I’m already pushing it, and I think the sun is consistent enough, now, that I might be able to grow some of the seeds I found at the beginning.”

Allison examines the space with a renewed interest. She knows next to nothing about gardening but, knowing Five, he’s probably been pouring over books on it. If he says this is a good spot to garden, she’s going to believe him. “That’s a good idea, Five,” she says.

“I know.” He beams.

Luther steps over to the nearest chunk of concrete and easily scoops it up and tosses it aside. Allison picks up a brick. This is going to fall on mostly Luther to complete, and she shoots him apologetic glance. He shakes his head at her minutely as he picks up another hunk of debris.

Five hovers for another few minutes, making sure they know exactly the area he wants clear and pointing out larger chunks he wants left alone so he can hang shades for his future plants. Plan clearly expressed, he finally leaves to go back to Delores and his cart to collect his haul from the cellar.

The sun slowly creeps higher in the sky, bringing heat with it. Allison feels useless as she kicks aside small rocks and bricks while Luther does all the actual work of clearing the space. Eventually she gives up on the pretense and sits on the low remains of a wall. She’s hot and sweaty and badly in need of some water.

“How are you doing?” she asks Luther.

He pauses with a chunk of rebar in his hands. He sighs. “I feel like I don’t really have any space to complain, here.”

“Yeah. But for real, are you doing ok? I know you need to eat.”

He grimaces. “I’m fine for a while yet. I’ve gone longer, I’m fine.”

Allison frowns at that, “When?”

“On the moon. Dad wasn’t always great about getting supplies up on time.”

Her eyes widen. Luther avoids her concern by throwing more rubble to the side.

“How are you holding up?” he asks her after a moment, ducking the follow up questions she was about to ask.

Allison lets it drop. They’re already miserable enough here. “Same as you. Good for a while, yet. I feel so useless, though.”

Luther spares a smile for her, “You’re fine. This is more of a me job, anyway.”

“Still.” She gets up to kick more small rocks to the side.

They work in quiet tandem. Luther is making quick work of the rubble piles.

He breaks the silence when they’re just over halfway through Five’s designated area, “I didn’t think it was this bad.”

“What?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t. I don’t know what I expected the apocalypse to be and I guess if I was smarter, I would have put together how horrible it is here, but I didn’t.”

Allison’s gut lurches. She’s been having the same guilty thoughts. They’ve all been focusing on Five’s years of killing for the Commission, with the Commission the more immediate problem in their lives. “He didn’t tell us,” she says quietly. It’s a weak excuse.

“Still, I,” Luther sighs. He rubs his eyes with a large hand. He’s genuinely upset about this. “He gave us clues, hints. We should have put it together ourselves. Forty years as the only person on earth? I thought I could relate, you know? I was the only person on the moon for four years. I get loneliness. This though, this is.” He shakes his head, at a loss for words.

“Hey,” Allison murmurs, stepping over to grab his arm and offer support. “None of us thought about it. There was a lot going on and Five, for better or worse, is different than this Five. He wanted us focused on other things.”

Luther tries for a half-hearted smile. He rests his huge hand over hers before he shakes her off to lift more debris.

They’re almost done when he sighs again. He throws some concrete to the side and turns to her. “I just keep coming back to how I wouldn’t have been able to do it. If it was me stuck here, the only person who could save the world, I don’t think I would have been able to do it.”

Allison stands to look at him. She should have known he’d been stewing on these thoughts. Luther is worrier and he fixates on problems until they’re solved. It should have made him a good leader. This problem doesn’t have an easy solution, though. “I think you might surprise yourself,” she offers. “There’s no way to predict how you’d do in a situation like this, you know? How could you possibly know what you would do? I don’t think Five could have predicted that he’d survive for forty years like this and—"

“Having fun?”

A familiar voice interrupts her and Allison spins to see Five, their Five, standing a few feet behind them, briefcase in hand.

“Five!” she cries. She has never been so relieved to see him and his little uniform before. He smiles at her but it’s not a nice smile. It falls quickly.

“Oh, thank god,” Luther breathes.

“Yes, I’m here to save the day. Sorry you had to be here for a little while, sorting out the Commission and locating you two was… messy. Let’s get going.” He glances around them and shifts his grip on the briefcase.

Allison wants nothing more than to leave here. It’s awful. Still, she’d made a promise to herself yesterday. “Wait, before we go. Can we tell you? The other you. Can we tell him how the world ends? Can you give him a hint so he isn’t stuck here?”

Five gives her a flat look. “No.”

Luther frowns, “What do you mean ‘no’? You could save yourself decades. Get back home sooner.”

The smile Five gives them is nasty, one he usually reserves for people he’s about to murder. Allison stands her ground against it, firming her jaw.

“If you haven’t told him already, which it sounds like you didn’t if you’re asking me to do it, then you already know why we can’t,” Five says.

“You could leave here! Five, why don’t you want that?” Luther pushes.

“Yes, leaving myself here for another, what, how old am I here, twenty-five? Another twenty-eight years sounds great. My idea of a great time.” Five rolls his eyes. “No, you idiots, this is one of two situations. If this is actually my own past, changing anything for him fucks up everything for me. The other possibility, and the more likely one, is that this is a pocket timeline the Commission saved as somewhere to throw me. My actual past, this future, doesn’t exist anymore. We diverted the timeline from it. The Five that is here is just a leftover copy of that. He’s never actually going to leave here.”

“What do you mean he’s never going to leave?” Allison asks, horrified.

“If this is a pocket timeline, they wouldn’t save anything past my leaving here. The only period that exists is my apocalypse, ergo, there’s nowhere for him to leave to. I assume if they actually threw me in here, they’d take him out and make me go through the whole song and dance by myself all over again. Curious they didn’t do that for you, although based on how you’re reacting maybe this was more effective.” He shakes his head at them like they’re stupid for wanting to get him out of his personal hell.

Luther looks just as upset about this as she does. Five takes in their disbelief and sighs, “You do bring up a good point, though. Where is he? Nearby?”

“He went to go get supplies from a cellar a little ways away. He should be back soon,” Luther says.

Five frowns at that. “A nearby cellar?” He thinks for a moment before his expression clears. “You moved that rubble for him, didn’t you? Ah, lucky bastard. Anyway, that’s good. When he gets back, Allison can Rumor him and we can leave.”

“What do you mean I can Rumor him?” Allison asks.

“So he’ll forget you were ever here.”

She’s incredulous. “He’s been alone for a decade and will be alone for another three, and you want me to take the one moment of actual company away from him?”

He tilts his head and considers her. “Seems crueler to not, doesn’t it?”

“No?!”

Five does his little frown that means he’s humoring them. “Let’s think this through, then. Put yourselves in my shoes, should be easy you’ve been here for almost a day, you’ve gotten a taste. You are the only person left on Earth. Suddenly, two of the people you miss most in the world appear and they’re _real_. How do you feel?”

Allison doesn’t have to think hard. She’s seen the wondrous delight on Five’s face. “Ecstatic,” she says quietly. She thinks she knows where Five is going with this.

“Ecstatic! It’s not ideal, you don’t want these people in literal hell with you, but you’re not alone! And they tell you such great news! You get out! You save the world! It’s all going to be ok if you can just make it a little while longer.”

Luther shifts unhappily next to her. He can see the direction this is headed, too. Five keeps talking, tone growing more caustic as he goes. “Then they disappear. One glorious day with two of your siblings, and then they’re gone. You were doing alright, before then, but suddenly it’s so much quieter. So much lonelier. You’d forgotten how nice it was to hear other voices, until they came back and made all that noise and life around you. You hit a low point and you hallucinate them. How do you react to them?”

“Five, stop, I get it,” Allison whispers.

“How do you react?”

“I’d check if they were real,” Luther says, gaze downcast.

“They’re not. But they were once so maybe they will be next time. The cycle continues and maybe you decide they were hallucinations, too, but they helped so much when you talked to them so why keep ignoring them? Your math isn’t going anywhere, you’ve picked yet another flawed idea to build your theory off of. They said it would be a few more years but it’s been a decade and you’re still stuck here. But why are you trying so hard to leave, anyway? It’s a miserable existence but all your siblings are already here. They’re not real, but they were once so maybe they actually are and you’re just batshit.”

Allison sniffs angrily. Five is unwinding his own psyche with cruel precision. She knows the Five here. He’s not sane. This path would be easy for him to spiral down. The only thing keeping him going forward is his need to get back and save them. If he loses that, if he starts to doubt that, he might stop. And stopping means he will die.

“I get it!” she interrupts Five as he starts graphically describing his mental decline into death. “I get it, ok? I’ll Rumor him.”

“Thank you,” Five says, voice and expression flat. He deflates a bit a moment later, and he adds, “And I am sorry.”

She shakes her head. “There’s nothing for you to apologize for.” It’s just a hard situation.

The three of them all stand and look at each other. The sun beats down. A small wind blows dust into their faces. The silence stretches on, ringing and ever-present. Five sets the briefcase down so he can sit on it.

In the distance, there’s a clatter of displaced rubble and one of Five’s tuneless songs drifts over to them. “Finally,” Five mutters. Allison takes a deep breath to ground herself and thinks over how to phrase the Rumor. Luther gently reaches out for her shoulder in support as she walks past him. She glances back once at Five, her Five. He gives her a grimace and just nods. Rounding the corner, she loses sight of them. She walks the short distance to Five’s fire pit and sits on her pot to wait.

She doesn’t have to wait long for him. His singing gets louder and louder until he comes into view, pulling his large cart. It’s filled with all his goodies from the cellar – more wine, more water, piles of cans and MRE’s, a large medical kit, the wood he left behind – with Delores balanced on top of it all. Allison feels a little better leaving him here knowing his stockpile is at least partially refilled.

He breaks out into a beaming smile when he sees her. Her heart twists. “Allison!” he calls over. “Look at it all! We’ll be eating so well!”

“That’s great, Five! Can you come here for a moment? I need to tell you something.” He good naturedly stops the cart and takes a few steps towards her. Almost immediately, he backtracks so he can bring Delores with him. Allison doesn’t say anything. He might as well have her comfort. After setting Delores in her chair, Five sits down next to Allison. He raises an eyebrow.

Underneath the beard and unkempt hair, underneath the gaunt cheeks and dirty clothes, he looks so much like her Five, right now. He looks at her with those vacant eyes. She plasters on a fake smile. He won’t be able to tell it’s not genuine. Her heart is breaking inside.

“I just wanted to let you know that Luther and I are leaving. Your future-self got here a few minutes ago to take us home.”

Five blinks in surprise. Emotions flicker over his face. Shock, confusion, fear, disappointment. He swallows. “Oh.”

“I didn’t want to just disappear on you, I thought you should know.”

He nods slowly, still slightly shocked. “Thank you. And, and that’s good. You should go.” He nods more confidently, talking himself up. “You two don’t belong here. You should be in a world that is safe. And your daughter! You should be with your daughter. I can’t wait to meet her, I told you that, right? I read about her. She seems incredible.”

Allison takes in a shaky breath. “You didn’t, but I knew. She’ll love you.”

Five tries to smile at her. He fails miserably. His eyes are so sad and so scared. He glances at Delores. “No, I know. They have to go. I can’t be selfish, they can’t stay here with me. And they need me to stay here and do this right.”

“There’s something else I wanted to tell you,” Allison says quickly, interrupting his conversation before he can completely unravel her. She takes a deep breath. “We love you. We love you so, so much. And we miss you. We know you wouldn’t stay away on purpose and are trying so hard to get back.” It’s not all a lie. Vanya never gave up on him, at least. The rest of them believed that to varying, jaded levels. She continues, “You are so smart and so clever and you are going to figure it out. You are an extraordinary person, Five, and I truly believe you’re the only one who could save the world the way you’re going to.”

She’s left him speechless. His eyes dart across her face, unexpectedly sharp and present as he takes her in, memorizing her. If he still cried, she thinks he would right now. Five reaches out his thin hand and grasps hers in that same iron grip he had yesterday. His umbrella tattoo peeks out from his sleeve. Allison squeezes back. She lets her tears fall.

“It’s ok,” Five says. “I’ll see you soon, right?” He tries for a smile again and is marginally more successful.

“Before you even know it,” Allison lies. She swallows thickly. “And, there’s just one more thing I need to say.” He nods for her to continue, so trusting. Allison is the world’s worst sister. “Five, _I heard a rumor Luther and I were never here. You have always been alone in the apocalypse with only Delores for company. This was a pleasant dream that you will think back on fondly to give you strength to keep going but you know it wasn’t real_.”

As his gaze turns cloudy, Allison pulls her hand from his now-lax grip. She tosses the pot she was sitting on to the side as she backs out. Ducking around the corner just as her rumor finishes processing, she peeks back to check it worked correctly. She thinks she worded it right, in the least likely way to ruin him.

Five blinks and looks around a moment, reorienting. He glances at where she had been sitting moments before with a small frown. When he looks over and sees Delores he relaxes into a pleased smile. “Well, things aren’t going to put themselves away, are they?” he says to her. He gets up and heads towards his cart, launching back into his usual chatter.

Allison steps away. Her job is done. They can leave. It gets hard to walk back as her vision blurs.

Luther envelopes her in a hug when she reaches them. She sobs as quietly as she can into his chest. They can’t afford to let the other Five hear them. After a minute she pulls back slightly so she can see Five. He stands a short distance away, briefcase in hand and ready to go. He meets her gaze. He looks so old. “Thank you,” he says, softly. She just sniffles and nods.

After another minute she thinks she can pull herself together enough to go home. “Ok,” she says, taking a deep breath. “Ok, I’m ok. We can go.”

“Great,” Five says. “I would like to not be here anymore.” He reaches out a hand to her. She grabs it. He gives her a gentle squeeze as Luther steps to his other side to hold his shoulder. He’s studying her, gaze sad and old and present. She gives him a small, watery smile. He gives her a small smile in return.

With a click and a flash, they leave.

They land back in the Academy, in the living room. Klaus, Diego, and Vanya all spring up from the couches at their sudden appearance.

“Whoa whoa whoa what the hell happened to you?” Diego asks.

Allison looks over herself and Luther. They look distinctly haggard, their clothes rumpled and filthy. They’re both also pretty spectacularly sunburned. She can feel the gritty dirt coating her face. Belatedly, she realizes that means her tear tracks are probably very apparent. Vanya and Klaus’ concerned glances at her confirm that. She shakes her head slightly at them. She’s ok.

Five has already turned away from them, walking out of the room to go return the briefcase to whatever secret spot he keeps it in. Allison watches him disappear, heart aching for her brother. Both versions of him.

“Where did you go?” Vanya asks. “Five said the Commission stored you somewhere.”

“The future,” Allison says. “It’s shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure I made myself cry writing the Rumor.
> 
> I have decided to include the epilogue I wrote so there's one more chapter coming! It's written and I'm just stewing on it for if I'm happy with it or not, so I probably won't wait a whole week to post it.
> 
> Now, what you've been waiting for: my promised thoughts on Five's canned goods situation. Cans have a safe shelf-life of five years, give or take, according to what I found from Googling. Five is over a decade into the apocalypse, though, so cans are a risky food to eat. But this is pretend and in my version of the apocalypse there aren't really any other options for him for food. He's just getting to a point where the sky is clear enough for plants to be coming back. So, my can logic: If the cans aren't dented and their seals aren't compromised, they're probably safe to eat, especially if they were underground and protected more from extreme temperatures. They probably taste awful and have some funky textures, but when would Five care about that. Going forward, once he has his garden set and is an extraordinaire at canning, his scavenged and now dangerously expired canned foods become cockroach traps. He needs that protein from somewhere, right?
> 
> Anyway, thanks for going on this journey with me. One little epilogue to go! As always, love to hear your thoughts. You all have been so kind and supportive as I make you all cry.


	4. Epilogue: Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for brief mention of suicide

Allison pauses with her fist inches from Five’s door. To knock or not to knock.

Luther and Allison have been back from their visit to the apocalypse for a week, now. They weren’t actually gone for that long so the physical recovery was quick. A checkup from Mom, some hearty stews, and they were good as new.

The mental recovery has not been so easy.

She isn’t sure if she’s been avoiding Five or if Five has been avoiding her. Outside of meals and quick hellos while passing in the kitchen or hallway, they haven’t seen each other. Maybe they’re both avoiding one another. But she heads back for California tomorrow and she can’t leave without at least trying to talk to him about it all.

Allison takes a deep breath in, holds it a second, lets it out. And knocks.

“It’s open.”

She pushes the door open. Five is at his desk. He barely glances up as she enters. There’s a massive gun half disassembled in front of him.

“Where the hell did you get that?” she asks, immediately side-tracked.

“Dad’s office. Figured if we have it around might as well make sure it’s in working order. I was wondering when you were going to come by.” He pulls part of the barrel off with a soft _clink_ and sets it aside.

“You were expecting me?”

“You’re not one to let things lie.”

Allison pauses just inside the door. Five glances at her again with a raised eyebrow and jerks his head towards his bed. Invitation received; she gingerly sits on the edge of it. Now he has his back to her, still bent over the gun.

She still doesn’t say anything. She studies her brother instead. He’s focused on taking apart the gun and wiping every piece with an oily cloth, cleaning it with a practiced familiarity. He’s wearing one of his Umbrella Academy uniforms, as always.

“We need to get you some proper clothes,” she says.

Five sighs. “Clothes are clothes. Did I assume wrong and you are actually here to talk about guns and the state of my wardrobe?”

“No.” The problem is she doesn’t know where to start. She doesn’t know the best way to go at this conversation without spooking Five away before they can talk about anything real. He gets quickly frustrated by delicate conversations. Direct and blunt approaches work best but it’s still easy to talk past one another with him.

The silence stretches for a few seconds. Five sighs again and drops a piece of the gun with a small clatter. He wipes his hands off and then spins in his chair so he can look at her. He considers her for a long moment.

“Let’s start here; do you want this conversation because you need it or because you think I need it?”

Allison thinks about that. “I need it.” It’s the truth but she would have said that even if it wasn’t. Five won’t have this conversation unless he thinks it’s something he can do for her.

He nods. “Ok,” he says simply and waits for her to continue.

She still doesn’t know how to break this ice. There’s just so much.

Five is getting impatient with her. He rubs a small hand over his face. “How about this. Can you tell me why Luther is suddenly very concerned about my dental hygiene habits?”

That startles a snort out of her. “Um, yes. You, the you back there, told us he was going to have to pull one of his own teeth. He panicked a little about that.” Remembering Five, impossibly skinny and wincing as he ate horrifically expired dog food, immediately sobers her. “Why, do you need Mom to check anything? You know you can always go to her if you have any problems.”

He rolls his eyes. “I am aware. She checked me out last week. I’m no expert but I think that means I’m good for another six months. If you could tell Luther to back off that would be appreciated. I’ve got a whole new set of teeth I’m planning to keep until I’m 135 and I don’t need his help doing that.” He winces at the thought of being that old.

Allison smiles. “135?”

“Physically ninety.” He shakes his head in distaste. “I’m… not going to do that. I’m amending to 120.”

Doing quick mental math, she calculates he’s committed to living until he’s at least seventy-five, physically. She’ll take that, for now. His new, extended life-expectancy with his young body is a topic none of them have been brave enough to broach with him. She is pretty sure he doesn’t have plans to live much past the rest of them.

“I’ll pass on the message to Luther,” she says. “It’s just… It was jarring, how casually you brought it up.”

“I don’t know why you two are so surprised by it. I was the only person on Earth and had a terrible diet. Of course I ended up having to lose a few teeth.”

Finally, Allison has an in. “I think that’s the problem. We didn’t have any idea what to expect. Or, I guess we should have but we’d never thought about it. How rough that all was for you.” Christ, what an understatement.

“That’s it? Yes, it was a rough time.” He shrugs. “Would like to never do it again. The whole point of doing it in the first place was so that you all wouldn’t have to think about it. If the problem is you feel bad because you never stopped to consider what forty years in an apocalypse looked like, then you’re forgiven. I never expected you to. I actively hoped you wouldn’t. Are we good?”

“No, Five. It’s…” Allison doesn’t know why this is so hard. She’s usually better with words. “I’m not saying this right.”

“You’re not saying anything!” She’s hit the end of Five’s patience for this conversation.

“Just, give me a second to get my thoughts in order. How to explain it to you.” Allison desperately tries to organize all her thoughts and feelings about those eighteen hours in the end of the world. She doesn’t know why she’s trying; she’s been doing it for the past week and still doesn’t have them processed.

Five huffs out a sigh and turns to scoop up a mug from his desk. He moves to take a sip and brings it down with a disappointed grimace. Empty. “How long do you need to get those thoughts in order?” he asks.

“What?”

“I’m going to get more coffee. I can walk there or I can jump there. How much time do you need?”

Her heart fills with warmth. He’s trying so hard to give her this conversation she wants. “Walk, please.”

Five flips her a little salute and walks out, mug in hand.

Allison closes her eyes and tries to empty her mind. She has roughly five minutes to figure out what is the center of her unease surrounding her time in the apocalypse. Easy.

She buries her head in her hands. “Fuck,” she mutters to herself.

As quickly as she can, she sifts through her time there. The hot, dusty emptiness. The bodies everywhere. Their graves. Five’s home in the library. Delores. Five hovering around them, absolutely clueless with what to do with them but ecstatic about their presence none the less.

She relaxes. She has it. She found the common thread between each distressing piece.

 _Whumpf_. Five appears in front of her, steaming mug of coffee in hand.

“Sorry. I ran into Klaus on the stairs and I was not in the mood to deal with whatever that was going to be.” He sits back on his chair, takes a sip of his coffee, and raises an expectant eyebrow at her. “Did you find the right words?”

“I did.” She studies Five for a moment. “Are you ok?”

Five is supremely unimpressed. “That’s what you couldn’t find the words for? I’m fine.”

“No, Five. I need a real answer. I met you. You were starving, you had to treat your own injuries, you had to bury your entire family. Your only companion was…” She skips over that one. None of them are sure how real Delores is to Five. “You made a grave for yourself. Are you ok?”

“Ah,” Five says and leans back in his chair. “He showed you your graves.”

“Yes.” Allison flashes back to those six mounds. Six mounds and the half-finished seventh for himself.

“If I didn’t kill myself there, I’m not going to kill myself here.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“Then what!?”

“What do you mean then what? You found us dead when you were thirteen years old! You were alone for forty years! How can you possibly be fine?” She is almost shouting by the end. She takes a deep breath to recenter herself.

Silence hangs between them.

Five gently shakes his mug so he can watch the coffee swirl. Allison waits for him.

“Does it matter?” he asks quietly.

She frowns. “What?”

“Does it matter if I’m ok or not?” He looks up at her, expression hard to read.

“Of course it matters.”

His expression doesn’t change as he studies her. A few, long seconds drag on before he sighs. “I’m going to say this once. Someone in this house needs to understand this. To survive and get back you all and save you all, it could never be about me. What I wanted, outside of that goal, had to be inconsequential. Irrelevant. Everything had to be about staying alive long enough to figure out the math and get back to you, by whatever means necessary. If it was about me and if I was _ok_ or not, I would have just killed myself after that first year when it became clear how far I was from a solution. It was borderline impossible and I knew that at fourteen. To keep working towards it was an insane choice to make, the odds of my success were negligible. I know because I calculated them.”

Allison inhales sharply when he mentions killing himself. Five watches her, old and sad. “But you figured it out,” she points out like he doesn’t know that.

“I figured it out.” He nods. “Forty-five years and 273 corrections later. That’s what it cost.”

She hates the Commission vernacular, distancing themselves from what they do. It’s murder. He’s never given any of them a number before, though. They knew he was the Commission’s best; he and the Commission have not been subtle about that. Five killed almost three hundred people in just over four years.

It’s sobering to have a number.

Five keeps watching her with that intense gaze of his. “So, I’ll ask again; does it matter if I’m ok?”

She swallows around the lump in her throat. “Yes.”

He’s genuinely confused by that, his whole face furrows with it.

Allison gives him a sad smile. “Yes, it matters if you’re ok. If not to you, then to the rest of us. You don’t have to be ok right now. Honestly, I’d be worried if you were. But we’re all here with you now. You’re not going it alone anymore. You saved the entire world, let us help you. You don’t have to be ok today, or tomorrow, or the day after that. But I hope you can be ok eventually.”

Five looks back down at his coffee and sloshes it some more so he can escape her earnest gaze. “I don’t know how to be,” he mumbles.

“That’s ok. Have you seen us? We’re all a mess. We’ll help each other.”

He doesn’t say anything. Allison watches him. She thinks about the Five she met in the apocalypse, all his chatter and the easy, if vacant, smiles he was constantly giving her and Luther.

“You’re so different from him,” she murmurs.

Five glances up and raises an eyebrow. “From who?”

“The other you. The you in the apocalypse.”

The corner of his mouth twitches up. “How much are you like your twenty-five-year-old self?”

She smiles in surprise. “Pretty different, thankfully.”

“But not a totally different person. I’m probably more like him than I’d like to be, still. That was also thirty-three years ago. He was a dumb twenty-something, all starry-eyed and in love. I am a grumpy old man.” He takes a sip of coffee to emphasize his point. Allison snorts at the irony as he stares at her with his thirteen-year-old face.

 _Starry eyed and in love._ That’s not how she would have described him. He had been very attentive to his plastic wife, though. “When did you get together with Delores?” Allison asks, banishing the fact that Delores is a mannequin from her mind.

His smile is so soft. “When I was around twenty-three. We danced around it for a few years before that.”

It brings up another thought that’s been nagging at her, especially now, thinking about the differences between the two Fives. “I have another question,” she says.

Five motions with the mug for her to continue. “We’re already this far into it, might as well keep shooting.”

“Were you happier in the apocalypse?”

His eyebrows slowly furrow as he thinks about that and sips his coffee. Allison tries not to hold her breath. “No,” he answers. “I think I had moments of happiness, I’m only human. But I wouldn’t call that period of my life happy.”

“Are you happy here with us?”

Five sighs, “This goes back to what I said before. I gave up looking for happy. Chasing it was just going to make me insane. Well, more insane than I already was. Happy didn’t matter. Getting back to you all and saving you is what mattered.”

She should have expected that. _Ok_ to Five means still breathing. “But are you happy?” she presses again. This is important.

He looks at her over the rim of his mug, his old eyes taking her in. “I think I could be.”

“Good.”

Allison doesn’t know if she feels better, per se, but her thoughts are less turbulent, more settled. There’s more she could push for, but he’s been unexpectedly cooperative and open with her about his feelings and she’s gotten what she needed. She looks at Five for a long moment and then stands.

Five’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. Thank you.”

He nods. She almost makes it to the door when he calls after her, “Allison.”

She turns. He’s still sitting at his desk, turned in his chair to face her. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“For what?”

“That you had to be there. And I didn’t get you out sooner. I never wanted any of you to have to experience that. You didn’t deserve it.”

His word choice twists her gut. He knows he didn’t deserve it either, right? She shakes the thought from her mind. It’s a conversation for another time.

“I’m not,” Allison says, choosing her words carefully. “I’m not glad we got thrown there, but I’m not sorry, either. What I am glad about is that you aren’t as alone in it, anymore. I know I don’t understand what you went through but I’m glad I know a piece of it.”

Five blinks a few times at her answer. He doesn’t know what to do with that. He settles for a jerky nod. “Well,” he says. Allison is pretty sure he has more to say. She waits patiently at his door. The silence stretches. The other him would be filling it with chatter. He swallows. “I’m also sorry you had to Rumor him. I know that was hard and unfair of me to ask of you, but it was the best option. Thank you.”

“Option?” she asks. It hadn’t seemed like an option at the time.

He shrugs. “If we really wanted to do the kind thing, we would have killed him.”

_Oh, Five._

“Is that really how you feel about it?”

“If there really was no after for him, why prolong his suffering? There was just enough of a chance that he was actually me, though, and killing him could have thrown us into a grandfather paradox. I didn’t think we wanted to test the effects of that.”

“So we did the next kindest thing,” Allison murmurs. Five gives another jerky nod. “I understand why you had me do it. Like I said there, you don’t have to apologize. It was a hard situation all around.”

“I wanted to, anyway.”

“Well, thanks. You’re forgiven for it all.”

Five snorts and shakes his head. They sit in the silence for a moment. He turns back to his desk and picks up a piece of the gun.

Conversation over. She smiles a little. Such a Five way to end it.

Allison makes it halfway down the hall before she turns and almost runs back to Five’s room. She bursts through his door, startling him from where he was sitting frozen, gun piece in his hand and gaze far away. He takes in her open arms as she slows down, giving him a chance to decide if he wants to be part of this or not.

Five drops the piece with a clatter and awkwardly stands so she can wrap him in her arms. It takes him a moment to figure out how to hug her back, but once he does, he clings to her. He fits neatly against her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she whispers to the top of his head. “Thank you for surviving everything. Thank you for saving us. Thank you for coming back.”

“It was an easy choice,” he says. She huffs a small laugh around her teary eyes. It really wasn’t. She saw what he was dealing with.

But maybe it was, for him.

Five grips her back, harder. “And worth it. I would do it again if I had to,” he adds.

She knows he would. It would destroy him, but he’d do it.

“I love you, Five.”

He fumbles on the words but manages to get it out, “I love you, too.” His voice cracks in the middle and he shifts in irritation. She knows he hates it when that happens. She laughs again and she can feel his crooked smile from where his face is pressed into her shoulder.

Allison holds her brother for a long moment, until he shifts again. She releases him and he carefully pulls back. He clears his throat and pushes a hand through his hair, not looking at her. “You have a plane to catch, don’t you?” he asks roughly.

“Tomorrow morning,” she says. She has completely overwhelmed him. Last week she would have been irritated by his sudden and brusque dismissal. Now she understands, better. He just needs some space to recover and he doesn’t know any other way to get it. It’s progress that he didn’t just teleport away as soon as she let him go.

“Well, better get going then,” he says and shoos her towards the door with a hand. Allison leaves. At the door, she glances over her shoulder. He’s sat back down at his desk, cleaning the gun. He has a small smile on his face, though.

Allison shuts his door with a smile of her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And fin.
> 
> Wouldn't be an author's note by me for this fic if I didn't have some personal headcanon logic to ramble about. Today's topic: Five's timeline at the Commission. They never give us an actual amount of time that he works for them for. I know the idea that he was there for less than a year floats around, because he said he was in the apocalypse for forty-five years, but that's never sat right with me. The idea of him being the best, a legend, in a matter of months seems ridiculous, although if anyone could do that it's Five. My personal interpretation is that he probably almost finished his contract -- over four years of service. He told his siblings "forty-five years alone" because he just got back, wasn't going to delve into his assassin work with them right then, and it's not like he wasn't still alone at the Commission. 
> 
> The first few months would have been some intense reprogramming so he could be at least semi-functional in society and do his job. Would not have been a fun time for Five, I don't see the Commission being gentle about this. After that, Five isn't one to ask for breaks and the Commission isn't one to give them. I got my 273 number by playing with what could be reasonable. The most prolific assassin that I've found Googling had a body count of around 500 over a lifetime. Five has time travel, though, and is an apocalypse gremlin on a singular mission, so he can do much more in a much shorter amount of time. The number I came up with is about one a week for four years, with a little wiggle room for longer or shorter jobs and multiple hits on a few of those. Arguments could definitely be made for a higher number, depending how hard the Commission worked him. I also didn't count all the murdering he's done in the show (Commission grunts, the Board) in this number, so his actual body count is higher. 
> 
> Also also, I think Five would give really good hugs once he figured them out. He has a lot of love in a very small body and it has to go somewhere because it sure isn't going to be with words.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for going on this sad little apocalypse journey with me. It's stuff I've thought a lot about and it was fun to finally write at least some of it out and share it all with you. You've been such wonderful, supportive readers, I cherish every comment, kudos, and hit.


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